22:11 - Hex_Omegaflight, change your title from 'Stamp Tramp' to 'Master Of The Lists'. 15 lists in 4 months, lol

22:02 - mzyeah Neachy. I've been so out of the metal globe for 2.5 months and have checked only 4 albums: Eerie( 2014), that black metal album with red cover form Iceland, desolate shrine and Abyssal Gods. All of them are very good :D

Hey hey my my. Doom can never die… Huh. Never thought I'd hear an extreme doom band singing about Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols.

So back to the beginning. Solitude Productions recently re-released HellLight's 2008 release Funeral Doom, originally printed in a now sold-out limited run, packaging it with The Light That Brought Darkness mini album. The mini album features the new title track along with a bunch of doomed-up covers.

For sake of brevity, I'm going to gloss over the re-release a bit. In 2010 the band put out …And Then, The Light Of Consciousness Became Hell…, which was reviewed by your truly. In order to get to the more interesting stuff, suffice it to say Funeral Doom contains less well constructed and executed songs in the style of their later release. They got better over the ensuing two years, thus making the 2010 release with the ridiculous title a better place to start.

So that leaves the mini album. (Nothing mini about the length, it's almost an hour of music.)

The new opening track shows the same degree of improvement that the band exhibited between Funeral Doom and their 2010 album whose name I refuse to type again. The track is very promising, going through the similar phases and exhibiting the same characteristics I would expect… dark, miserable doom with growled vocals, crushing riffs, and hell-lighting ambience courtesy of some keyboards. They even close "The Light That Brought Darkness" out Dragonforce style… with a two minute solo. Nicely done, it shows they are even more refined and it makes me hopeful for their next release.

Finally the covers. Oh my. For starters, it was pretty cool to see an extreme doom act perform doomed-down covers of other metal and rock songs. It was certainly intriguing. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. While the music is interesting, particularly Neil Young's "Hey Hey My My" and Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb, the biggest criticism of their prior release was the clean vocals. In the band's natural environment they were used sparingly (and fortunately given the response to the prior review) and they now become the focus.

Dio, Danzig, and David (Gilmour, just wanted to keep the frontman alliteration thing going) are charismatic and great vocalists in their own right, making the comparison not particularly favorable. At times they were passable but at other times flat out awkward.

Still, the tracks make for an intriguing listen, especially because they are pulling from so far out of the band's element. Better a funeral doom act attempting to cover Pink Floyd in some blend of styles rather than just tweaking another song by a far more similar band.

The covers are worth checking out, and if that draws your attention to the band's own material, so much the better.

Written by !J.O.O.E.! on 16.05.2012 at 20:55Not for the first time either. Dark Metal wasn't really dark metal, and to be honest Black Metal was a pretty shitty excuse of a badly made heavy metal album.

Written by !J.O.O.E.! on 16.05.2012 at 20:55Not for the first time either. Dark Metal wasn't really dark metal, and to be honest Black Metal was a pretty shitty excuse of a badly made heavy metal album.

lol... but surely they didn't mean to be a Funeral Doom band? They were just called Funeral... pretty apt for a doom band.

Yes, they did mean that, unfortunately. And last time I talked to them (even though there isn't an original member in the band any more) they still insist on that when they formed they played funeral doom and to a certain extent still play it

lol... but surely they didn't mean to be a Funeral Doom band? They were just called Funeral... pretty apt for a doom band.

Yes, they did mean that, unfortunately. And last time I talked to them (even though there isn't an original member in the band any more) they still insist on that when they formed they played funeral doom and to a certain extent still play it

I never considered Funeral a funeral doom band... they might have some elements, but they are (slow) doom/death to me... pretty weird that even the band members think they are a funeral doom band... it might explain why their music is shit...